Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 25:9
And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this [is] our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this [is] the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
9. Lo, this is our God save us ] Or, Behold our God on whom we have hoped that he should save us. So in the next clause: on whom we have hoped.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
9 12. The humiliation of Moab. The heading in Isa 25:9 marks this as a distinct section. It might indeed be supposed, from the phrase “in this mountain” in Isa 25:10, and the use of future tenses in 10 12, that the song of praise ends with Isa 25:9 and that 10 12 are the continuation of Isa 25:8. But this is unlikely. The express naming of Moab is not in the manner of the main apocalyptic prophecy, while to take Moab as a symbolic name for the enemies of God in general is hazardous, as being opposed to Old Testament usage. The violent contrast between the spirit of Isa 25:6-8 and that of Isa 25:10-12 rather favours the supposition that the latter was a separate composition. In any event, we must assume that so passionate an outburst of indignation against Moab was called forth by some special circumstance, although it is not possible to connect it with any known historic occasion.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And it shall be said in that day – By the people of God. This shall be the language of exultation and joy which they shall use.
Lo, this is our God – This is the language of those who now see and hail their Deliverer. It implies that such deliverance, and such mercy could be bestowed only by God, and that the fact that such mercies had been bestowed was proof that he was their God.
We have waited for him – Amidst many trials, persecutions, and calamities, we have looked for the coming of our God to deliver us, and we will rejoice in the salvation that he brings.
This is the Lord – This is Yahweh. It is Yahweh that has brought this deliverance. None but he could do it. The plan of redeeming mercy comes from him, and to him is to be traced all the benefits which it confers on man.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 25:9
And it shall be said in that day, To, this is out God
Waiting for God in times of darkness
Isaiah is thinking, first of all, of Hezekiahs victory over Sennacherib.
It was no ordinary day which saw the discomfiture of the Assyrian host before the walls of Jerusalem. We can scarcely understand the terror and dismay with which a religious Jew must have watched the growth of those mighty Oriental despotisms which, rising one after another in the great valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, aspired to nothing less than the conquest of the known world. The victory of a conqueror like Sennacherib meant the extinction of national life and personal liberty in the conquered people; it meant often enough violent transportation from their homes, separation from their families, with all the degrading and penal accompaniments of complete subjugation. It meant this by the conquered pagan cities; for Jerusalem it meant this and more. The knowledge and self-worship of God maintained by institutions of Divine appointment, maintained only in that little corner of the wide world, were linked to the fortunes of the Jewish state, and in the victory of Sennacherib would be involved not merely political humiliation, but religious darkness. When, then, his armies advanced across the continent again and again, making of a city a heap, and of a fenced city a ruin, and at last appeared before Jerusalem, when the blast of the terrible ones was as a storm against the wall, there was natural dismay in every religious and patriotic soul. It seemed as though a veil or covering, like that which was spread over the holy things in the Jewish ritual, was being spread more and more completely over all nations at each step of the Assyrian monarchs advance, and in those hours of darkness all true-hearted men in Jerusalem waited for God. He had delivered them from the Egyptian slavery. He had given them the realm of David and Solomon. He who had done so much for them would not desert them now. In His own way, at His own time, He would rebuke this insolent enemy of His truth and His people, and this passionate longing for His intervention quickened the eye and melted the heart of Jerusalem when at last it came. The destruction of Sennacheribs host was one of those supreme moments in the history of a people which can never be lived over again by posterity. The sense of deliverance was proportionated to the agony which had preceded it. To Isaiah and his contemporaries it seemed as though a canopy of thick darkness was lifted from the face of the world, as though the recollections of slaughter and death were entirely swallowed up in the absorbing sense of deliverance, as though the tears of the city had been wiped away and the rebuke of Gods people was taken from earth, and therefore from the heart of Israel there burst forth a welcome proportionated to the anxious longing that had preceded it: Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him; He will save us. (H. P. Liddon, D. D.)
God in history
The recognition of Gods presence in the great turning points of human history is in all ages natural to religious minds. God, of course, is here in quiet times, when all goes smoothly, as though it were regulated by unchangeable law. But His presence is brought before the imagination more vividly when all seems at stake, when the ordinary human resources of confidence and hope are clearly giving way, when nothing but a sudden, sharp turn in what looks like the predestined course of events can avert some fatal catastrophe. This is what was felt by our ancestors in the days of the Spanish Armada. This is what was felt in every religious mind throughout Europe when the power of the First Napoleon was broken, first at Leipsic, and then at Waterloo. (H. P. Liddon, D. D.)
A forecast of the last judgment
But beyond the immediate present Isaiah sees, it may be indistinctly, into a distant future. The judgment of Assyria, like that upon Egypt in a previous age, like that upon Babylon afterwards, foreshadowed some universal judgment, some judgment upon all the enemies of God. The visible Divine action upon a small scale was itself a revelation of the principles upon which the world is governed, and which one day will be seen to have governed it in the widest and most inclusive sense, and thus Isaiahs prediction of the song which would be sung by Israel at the defeat of Sennacherib is a prediction of the song which will be sung by the redeemed when Christ our Lord comes to judgment. (H. P. Liddon, D. D.)
Christ our God
But between the days of Hezekiah and the final judgment, there is another event ever close to the thought of the prophet–the appearance of the great Deliverer in the midst of human history.Lo, this is our God. Christ is not for us Christians merely or chiefly the preacher or herald of a religion of which another being, distinct from Himself, is the object. The Gospel creed does not run thus, There is no God but God, and Christ is His prophet. The Author and Founder of Christianity, He is also at the same time its subject and its substance. We may say, with truth, that Christ is Christianity. (H. P. Liddon, D. D.)
Waiting for God
I. Contemplate THE GLORIOUS OBJECT we are here invited to behold. Lo, this is our God. The words express strong emotions of pleasure, admiration, and joy, arising from the merciful interpositions made in behalf of His people, whereby Jehovah manifested Himself present among them. Though God is invisible to our bodily eyes, we behold Him when we sensibly discern those visible effects which cannot be produced by any other than His omnipotent arm. There subsists between Him and us a reciprocal endearing relation, a mutual tender affection, a continued delightful intercourse, a most agreeable concord, and an intimate union of interest and design.
II. Consider THE BECOMING EXERCISE in which the Church was employed. We have waited for Him. The repetition of the words plainly intimates the great earnestness and persevering diligence with which the saints had waited upon the Lord their God. This duty includes–
1. Earnest desire.
2. Lively expectation.
3. Holy serenity of mind (Lam 3:26; Isa 30:15). This sacred tranquillity of soul represses those uneasy disquietudes and tumultuous thoughts, which disturb the mind, and unfit for the right performance of this or any other duty. It composes the soul attentively to observe every symptom of the Divine approach, every appearance from which may be deduced favourable consequences, and every opportunity that ought to be diligently improved. It gives a seasonable check to that precipitation and haste which springs from uneasiness at our present condition, and from hurtful anxiety about immediate deliverance.
III. Attend to THE ASSURED CONFIDENCE in God which the Church expressed in these words: He will save us. In every age they have viewed the Lord as their Saviour. Salvation from the hands of their enemies, which was doubtless primarily intended in the words before us, is employed as an image, to shadow out a salvation of an infinitely higher and more important nature.
IV. Examine THE CONSEQUENT RESOLUTION adopted by the Church. We will be glad, and rejoice in His salvation. In this salvation, which is admirably suited to our character and circumstances, we ought to be glad and rejoice. (R. Macculloch.)
Third Sunday in Advent
(1) In this lesson there is an interlacement of praise and prophecy.
(2) The words we have waited for Him, describe the posture of the Church at all times, but especially at this season. In the Old Testament, the Jews waited for the first coming of Christ. The light of the first prophecy became wider and brighter as the fulfilment drew nigh. The Church waits for the second coming.
I. WHAT DOES WAITING IMPLY?
1. Faith. Christians believe in the promise of His coming (1Co 1:7). Those who have reduced the Christian creed to its smallest dimensions have included in it the belief in Christs second coming as Judge.
2. Desire (2Ti 4:8; Rev 22:20; Php 3:20; Rom 8:19).
3. Patience (Jam 5:7).
4. Preparation.
II. WHY WAIT SO LONG?
1. The question was discussed in the Middle Ages. Why was the Incarnation so long delayed? Why was not the remedy at once applied to the disease? It is not for us to question the ways of God; but, although we accept them in the spirit of faith, yet, having done so, we should reverently exercise our reason, so far as we can, upon matters of faith.
2. One reason for this delay of the Incarnation is drawn from the condition of man. He had to be humiliated by a sense of his sinfulness in order that he might feel his need of a Deliverer. The remedy has not only to be vouchsafed, but to be accepted, and for this human pride must be broken down. We see the same providence in individual sinners as in a microcosm. God allows the prodigal to pursue his downward course until he is brought to his senses, and misery brings him to the turning point.
3. All delays in the approaches of God are for the sake of man that he might prepare to receive Him. The ministry of the Baptist is a visible setting forth of this need of preparation.
III. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? Lo, this is our God, etc.
1. That there is a primary reference to wonderful interventions of God on behalf of His people, whether in contemporary or subsequent deliverances, is admitted. Whatever may be the historic application, it cannot be more than a type of the full accomplishment of the prophecy in the Person of Christ. He alone swallows up death in victory; and wipes away tears from off all faces.
2. The text is fulfilled by the Incarnation. This is our God. It points to the mystery that our Lord is a Divine Person, and that therefore He can save us. This stirs the hymn of joy, We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. This is no mere temporal deliverance, but freedom from the powers of darkness–the salvation of the soul, pardon for sin, gift of grace, hope of glory; these deep inward gifts awaken such chords of praise in the redeemed, that all joy and thanksgiving for earthly deliverances are but a faint prelude to their exultation. The great mystery, The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; the great truth Unto you is born a Saviour; the great experience, Ye were sometime darkness, now are ye light in the Lord;–by these is fulfilled the blessed promise, that the veil of darkness and the wail of sorrow through Christ shall be done away, and the voice of rejoicing and salvation be in the tabernacles of the righteous.
IV. LESSONS.
1. The text impresses on us the right use of Advent as a season of preparation for the coming of Christ.
2. This preparation to consist in repentance for sin, and faith in Christ.
3. The words of the text express the joy of an earnest Christmas Communion. This is our God; we have waited for Him; for he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me (Joh 6:57).
4. They express also a true belief in the Incarnation, that realisation of the Divine and human united forever in the One Person of the Son of God, which thrilled the soul of St. Thomas when he cried out, My Lord and my God! (The Thinker.)
Waiting for God
Interwoven with all human experiences there is the consciousness of a conflict, an oppression, a captivity. But men expect deliverance. If it were not so, effort would be paralysed, and history would end. This hope is not illusive; the God who has implanted in the hearts of all men an anticipation of deliverance is a God who will give deliverance. But deliverances do not come when men desire them, hope for them, expect them. Often there is long delay.
I. GOD KEEPS MEN WAITING.
I. Let us notice how true this is of the history of our race. The race is wrestling with a mighty sorrow. We look through the ages, and we see that every age has its burden of woe. We go among the diverse peoples of mankind, and we find that there is not a tribe which does not exhibit tokens of the strife. The eternal God has spoken, and His voice has told the world that the secret of the worlds sorrow and strife and pain is the worlds sin. And the honest conscience echoes back the truth of God but the same Voice which tells the world of sin, tells also of a Saviour. But how long man had to wait before his hope was realised! And, even now that Christ has come, His advent proves to be, not some grand final stroke of triumph, but only the beginning of another waiting that, perhaps, must be longer still.
2. How true is this principle with respect to the history of the Church. God is fashioning to Himself a new race out of the ruins of the old. But think how the Church has had to wait.
3. How true is this same principle of the history of the nations. Each nation reproduces, on a smaller scale, the history of the race; and each has its burden and evil, each has its hope. But the nations likewise wait for their deliverance from thrall and pain. How impressive an example of waiting is the history of the Jews! Our England, too, is only gradually emerging from what it has been to what it shall be. So of the various nationalities of Europe, of the swarming multitudes of Asia, of the tribes of dark Africa, and the rest–who would dare to think that the goal of their history is reached!
4. But this principle is still further true in regard to individual men. Men of science, like Galileo; men of enterprise, like Columbus; men of letters, like Milton–these, who have done the most permanent work for the world, have often not been duly recognised as benefactors till they were gone. Does not our own spiritual history illustrate the same truth! How long it is, sometimes, before we reach a settled peace, an unquestioning faith; how long before we gain an established strength of purity, and are made perfect in love!
II. WHY DOES GOD KEEP MEN WAITING?
1. It is in accord with Gods universal way of working, so far as we know. We could conceive of a universe in which everything should be immediate and final; but that is certainly not the method of our universe. The records of geology tell of the earths slow development; the researches of biology attest the gradual unfolding of life; the annals of history show civilisation, science, and culture only progressing by degrees. So when God, in His providential and spiritual dealings with men, keeps them waiting, this is only in harmony with His general method and plan of work.
2. We must remember the bearing, on this subject, of mans own free will. Even when on Gods part all is ready, this sometimes interferes to cause long delay.
3. Great moral purposes are served by Gods law of waiting. It accomplishes a three-fold result: it is for the discipline of effort, of patience, of faith. Of course, we may fail to abide the test; but if we yield ourselves to it rightly, Gods principle of delay tends to the working out of one or more of these results.
III. THE WAITING DOES END SOME TIME. Otherwise, the problem would be insoluble, the instincts of mans own nature would belie themselves, and the very government of God itself would be purposeless. And while, unless mans own perverseness frustrates Gods designs, the waiting will end some time, it is suggested by these words of Isaiah that the deliverance, when it does come, will be a glad surprise. It is said that the poet Cowper, so much of whose life had been passed in bitter bondage, and who died at last in despair, wore on his face after death an expression of astonished joy. So it is true of the lesser deliverances of life, that God surprises His people at last with the swift removal of their fears, and with His more abundant benediction. And of the great deliverance which the day of God shall usher in at last, it is said, As the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man Mat 24:27)–so sudden, so swift, so full! What a paean shall then be sung over a transfigured world! (T. F. Lockyer, B. A.)
Connection between the confidence and the character of the true Christian
I. NOTHING WILL INSPIRE US WITH JOY AND CONFIDENCE IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT BUT A REAL INTEREST IN JESUS CHRIST. I might go further, and say, that nothing but a good hope of an interest in Christ can give us real, abiding, exalted enjoyment in this life.
II. NONE WILL IN THAT DAY HAVE A REAL INTEREST IN JESUS CHRIST, AND CONSEQUENTLY WILL REJOICE IN HIS SALVATION, BUT THOSE WHO ARE NOW WAITING FOR HIS COMING. This expression of waiting for Christ, or other expressions of a like meaning, are frequently used in the New Testament, as descriptive of the character of Christians.
1. To wait for Christ, implies a firm belief of His second coming, and of the infinitely momentous consequences which will follow that event. The true Christian is one who walks by faith, and not by sight.
2. To wait for Christ implies constant endeavour to be prepared for that event.
3. It implies a patient continuance in well-doing. (E. Cooper.)
Nativity
I. THE PERSON HERE CELEBRATED: who is made known to us in the prophets description of Him, by His actions and by His names. The greatest wonder in this subject is the dignity of the Person who should submit to redeem His Church.
II. THE EXPECTATION OF HIS COMING. However strange it may appear, it is certainly true, that a Saviour was expected both by Jews and heathens, however they might be mistaken with regard to some particular circumstances.
III. THE WORKS THE SAVIOUR WAS TO PERFORM AT HIS COMING. The particulars are recounted in the course of the chapter (Isa 25:4; Isa 25:6-8).
IV. With this hope we are to COMFORT OURSELVES AND ONE ANOTHER. We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. The day of His nativity was a blessed day: but what will that other day be! That will be our nativity; for then only we may be said to live, when the last enemy is conquered. When He shall appear again, He will appear as our life and we shall be clothed with His immortality. (W. Jones, M. A.)
The glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ
I. THIS MAY BE SAID OF THE INCARNATION OF GOD. Emmanuel, God with us, in one word conveys the same truth. Christ came not fortuitously; He came not in a passing current of compassion; but with full, unshaken continuity of purpose (Gal 4:4-5).
II. IN THE ABIDING PRESENCE OF HIS SPIRIT can we most joyously exclaim, Lo, this is our God.
III. Another intermediate sense in which we may consider Christ as coming to us–intermediate between His offering Himself up, and the bestowal of the influences of His Spirit–is THE FREE OFFER OF HIS GRACE IN THE GOSPEL.
IV. IN HIS EXECUTION OF JUDGMENT IN TIME.
1. Truly of Jerusalem might it be said, that not one stone was left upon another; and now she is not Jerusalem; though called still the Holy City, where is her glory? Where are her children!
2. On antichrist, too, the first shoot of present judgment has arisen.
3. Christ also comes to judgment in time, by many of what appeared to be temporal accidents.
4. And in His afflictions and deprivations He often judges the abuse of a possession, or deficient appreciation of it, and often in mercy executes this temporal judgment, in order that its effects upon the awakened conscience may obviate, and cause to be avoided, that dreadful punishment which knows no reversion.
V. In one sense, Christ has still to come. HE HAS TO COME TO FINAL JUDGMENT. (I. Hutchin, M. A.)
National thanksgiving
I. Let us consider WHAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND BY WAITING FOR GOD.
1. Almost innumerable instances might be referred to wherein the Jewish nation did evidently wait for God to be their salvation.
2. The same may be observed with regard to mankind in general.
(1) The inseparable difficulties attending our situation as dependent creatures are sometimes of so severe and pressing a nature, attended with such intricate consequences, and even in the eye of human wisdom so plainly productive of fatal events, that reason will naturally show us the necessity of applying for relief from a power more unlimited than our own, and cannot, when properly improved, but teach us to make our appeal to that Supreme Being who disposeth all things according to the infallible counsel of His will.
(2) And if we attend to the satisfactory instructions of revelation, this will not only show us the necessity of such a dependence, but also make us sensible of its usefulness and advantage.
II. IN WHAT RESPECTS WE MAY BE SAID TO HAVE WAITED FOR GOD.
III. THE NATURE OF THAT SALVATION WHICH HE HAS WROUGHT FOR US, and the beneficial tendency of such a deliverance.
IV. SOME USEFUL REFLECTIONS.
1. It is Our duty to acknowledge those favourable interpositions of Omnipotence, by which either national calamities are removed or national distress prevented.
2. It would be highly base and ungrateful not to rejoice in His salvation which He has so seasonably enabled us to obtain.
3. Consider what abundant advantages may arise, if we do not foolishly neglect to improve it, from the blessing of peace. (R. P. Finch, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 9. It shall be said – “Shall they say”] So the Septuagint and Vulgate, in the plural number. They read veameru, the Syriac reads veamarta, thou shalt say. They shall say, i.e., the Jews and the Gentiles – Lo, this [Jesus Christ] is our God: we have waited for him, according to the predictions of the prophets. We have expected him, and we have not been disappointed; therefore will we be glad, and rejoice in his salvation.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
It shall be said by Gods people, in way of triumph and reply to their enemies,
Lo, this is our God: your gods are senseless and impotent idols; but our God is omnipotent, and hath done these great and glorious works, which fill the world with admiration. We may well boast of him, for there is no God like to him. Possibly it may be an intimation that God should take flesh, and become visibly present amongst men.
We have waited for him; our Messiah or Saviour, long since promised, and for whom we have waited a long time, now at last is come into the world, bringing salvation with him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
9. And it shall be said in that day,c.”After death has been swallowed up for ever, the people ofGod, who had been delivered from the hand of death, shall say to theLord, Lo, this is our God, whom unbelievers regarded as only aman” [JEROME].”The words are so moulded as to point us specially to the personof the Son of God, who ‘saves’ us as He vouchsafed to Israel temporalsaving, so to His elect He appears for the purpose of conferringeternal salvation” [VITRINGA].The Jews, however, have a special share in the words, This isour God (see on Isa 25:6).
we have waited“Waited”is characteristic of God’s people in all ages (Gen 49:18;Tit 2:13).
we will be glad and rejoicein his salvationcompare Ps118:24, which refers to the second coming of Jesus (comparePsa 118:26; Luk 13:35).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And it shall be said in that day,…. When the feast will be made for all the Lord’s people; when the veil and covering shall be removed; when death will be swallowed up in victory; when all tears shall be wiped away from the saints; when their rebuke shall be taken away from them; all which will be at the glorious appearing of Christ.
Lo, this [is] our God; and not the idols of the Gentiles, or the works of their hands; but Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever; Immanuel, God with us: the phrase is expressive of his true and proper deity, of faith of interest in him, and of the joy of it:
we have waited for him, and he will save us: as the Old Testament saints waited for his first coming, and for his salvation, believing that he would be the author of it: so New Testament saints are waiting for his second coming; and to them that look for him, and expect his glorious appearing, who have their loins girt, and their lights burning, and wait for their Lord’s coming, will he appear a second time without sin unto salvation; to put them into the possession of salvation he has obtained for them, for which they are heirs, and is nearer than when they believed:
this [is] the Lord, we have waited for him; looking, longing, and hasting to the day of his coming; this they will say, when they shall see him coming in the clouds of heaven; whither the living saints being changed, will be caught up to meet him, and upon meeting him shall thus greet him, and one another:
we will be glad, and rejoice in his salvation; so suitable to them, so full, complete, and perfect, and so much for the glory of God; which was wrought out by him before, and now possessed by them; and is what is called the “joy” of their “Lord”, they now “enter” into, Mt 25:21.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
After this prophetic section, which follows the first melodious echo like an interpolated recitative, the song of praise begins again; but it is soon deflected into the tone of prophecy. The shame of the people of God, mentioned in Isa 25:8, recals to mind the special enemies of the church in its immediate neighbourhood, who could not tyrannize over it indeed, like the empire of the world, but who nevertheless scoffed at it and persecuted it. The representative and emblem of these foes are the proud and boasting Moab (Isa 16:6; Jer 48:29). All such attempts as that of Knobel to turn this into history are but so much lost trouble. Moab is a mystic name. It is the prediction of the humiliation of Moab in this spiritual sense, for which the second echo opens the way by celebrating Jehovah’s appearing. Jehovah is now in His manifested presence the conqueror of death, the drier of tears, the saviour of the honour of His oppressed church. “And they say in that day, Behold our God, for whom we waited to help us: this is Jehovah, for whom we waited; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” The undefined but self-evident subject to v’amar (“they say”) is the church of the last days. “Behold:” hinneh and zeh belong to one another, as in Isa 21:9. The waiting may be understood as implying a retrospective glance at all the remote past, even as far back as Jacob’s saying, “I wait for Thy salvation, O Jehovah” (Gen 49:18). The appeal, “Let us be glad,” etc., has passed over into the grand hodu of Psa 118:24.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Blessings of the Gospel. | B. C. 718. |
9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 10 For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill. 11 And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands. 12 And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust.
Here is, I. The welcome which the church shall give to these blessings promised in the foregoing verses (v. 9): It shall be said in that day, with a humble holy triumph and exultation, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him! Thus will the deliverance of the church out of long and sore troubles be celebrated; thus will it be as life from the dead. With such transports of joy and praise will those entertain the glad tidings of the Redeemer who looked for him, and for redemption in Jerusalem by him; and with such a triumphant song as this will glorified saints enter into the joy of their Lord. 1. God himself must have the glory of all: “Lo, this is our God, this is the Lord. This which is done is his doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Herein he has done like himself, has magnified his own wisdom, power, and goodness. Herein he has done for us like our God, a God in covenant with us, and whom we serve.” Note, Our triumphs must not terminate in what God does for us and gives to us, but must pass through them to himself, who is the author and giver of them: This is our God. Have any of the nations of the earth such a God to trust to? No, their rock is not as our rock. There is none like unto the God of Jerusalem. 2. The longer it has been expected the more welcome it is. “This is he whom we have waited for, in dependence upon his word of promise, and a full assurance that he would come in the set time, in due time, and therefore we were willing to tarry his time; and now we find it is not in vain to wait for him, for the mercy comes at last, with an abundant recompence for the delay.” 3. It is matter of joy unspeakable: “We will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. We that share in the benefits of it will concur in the joyful thanksgivings for it.” 4. It is an encouragement to hope for the continuance and perfection of this salvation: We have waited for him, and he will save us, will carry on what he has begun; for as for God, our God, his work is perfect.
II. A prospect of further blessings for the securing and perpetuating of these. 1. The power of God shall be engaged for them and shall continue to take their part: In this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest, v. 10. The church and people of God shall have continued proofs of God’s presence with them and residence among them: his hand shall be continually over them, to protect and guard them, and continually stretched out to them, for their supply. Mount Zion is his rest for ever; here he will dwell. 2. The power of their enemies, which is engaged against them, shall be broken. Moab is here put for all the adversaries of God’s people, that are vexatious to them; they shall all be trodden down or threshed (for then they beat out the corn by treading it) and shall be thrown out as straw to the dunghill, being good for nothing else. God having caused his hand to rest upon this mountain, it shall not be a hand that hangs down, or is folded up, feeble and inactive; but he shall spread forth his hands, in the midst of his people, like one that swims, which intimates that he will employ and exert his power for them vigorously,–that he will be doing for them on all sides,–that he will easily and effectually put by the opposition that is given to his gracious intentions for them, and thereby further and push forward his good work among them,–and that on their behalf he will be continually active, for so the swimmer is. It is foretold, particularly, what he shall do for them. (1.) He shall bring down the pride of their enemies (and Moab was notoriously guilty of pride, ch. xvi. 6) by one humbling judgment after another, stripping them of that which they are proud of. (2.) He shall bring down the spoils of their hands, shall take from them that which they have got by spoil and rapine. He shall bring down the arms of their hands, which are lifted up against God’s Israel; he shall quite break their power, and disable them to do mischief. (3.) He shall ruin all their fortifications, v. 12. Moab has his walls, and his high forts, with which he hopes to secure himself, and from which he designs to annoy the people of God; but God shall bring them all down, lay them low, bring them to the ground, to the dust; and so those who trusted to them will be left exposed. There is no fortress impregnable to Omnipotence, no fort so high but the arm of the Lord can overtop it and bring it down. This destruction of Moab is typical of Christ’s victory over death (spoken of v. 8), his spoiling principalities and powers in his cross (Col. ii. 15), his pulling down Satan’s strong-holds by the preaching of his gospel (2 Cor. x. 4), and his reigning till all his enemies be made his footstool, Ps. cx. 1.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
9. And it shall be said. The verb אמר (ā măr) is indefinite, “He shall say;” but as the discourse does not relate to one or another individual, but to all in general, I chose to render it in a passive form. (146) This is an excellent conclusion; for it shews that God’s benefits are not in any respect doubtful or uncertain, but are actually received and enjoyed by men. The Prophet declares that the banquet, of which he formerly spoke, ( verse 6,) will not in vain be prepared by God; for men shall feast on it, and possess everlasting joy.
Lo, this is our God. That joyful shout, which he declares will be public, is the actual test and proof, so to speak, of the experience of the grace of God. This passage ought to be carefully observed; for the Prophet shews that there will be such a revelation as shall fix the minds of men on the word of God, so that they will rely on it without any kind of hesitation; and if these things belong, as they undoubtedly do belong, to the kingdom of Christ, we derive from them this valuable fruit, that Christians, unless they are wanting to themselves, and reject the grace of God, have undoubted truth on which they may safely rely. God has removed all ground of doubt, and has revealed himself to them in such a manner, that they may venture freely to declare that they know with certainty what is his will, and may say with truth what Christ said to the Samaritan woman, “We worship what we know.” (Joh 4:22.) Having been informed by the gospel as to the grace offered through Christ, we do not now wander in uncertain opinions, as others do, but embrace God and his pure worship. Let us boldly say, “Away with all the inventions of men!”
It is proper to observe the contrast between that dark and feeble kind of knowledge which the fathers enjoyed under the law, and the fullness which shines forth to us in the gospel. Though God deigned to bestow on his ancient people the light of heavenly doctrine, yet he made himself more familiarly known through Christ, as we are told;
“
No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him.” (Joh 1:18.)
The Prophet now extols that certainty which the Son of God brought to us by his coming, when he “sheweth to us the Father.” (Joh 14:9.) Yet, while we excel the ancient people in this respect, that the reconciliation obtained through Christ makes God, as it were, more gracious to us, there is no other way in which God can be known but through Christ, who is “the pattern and image of his substance.” (Heb 1:3.) “He who knoweth not the Son, knoweth not the Father.” (Joh 14:7.) Though Jews, Mahometans, and other infidels, boast that they worship God, the creator of heaven and earth, yet they worship an imaginary God. However obstinate they may be, they follow doubtful and uncertain opinions instead of the truth; they grope in the dark, and worship their own imagination instead of God. In short, apart from Christ, all religion is deceitful and transitory, and every kind of worship ought to be abhorred and boldly condemned.
Nor is it without good reason that the Prophet employs not only the adverb Lo, but the demonstrative pronoun This, (147) in order to attest more fully the presence of God, as, a little afterwards, by repeating the declaration of certainty and confidence, he expresses the steadfastness that will be found in those who shall worship God through Christ. It is certain that we cannot comprehend God in his majesty, for he “dwelleth in unapproachable light,” (1Ti 6:16,) which will immediately overpower us, if we attempt to rise to it; and therefore he accommodates himself to our weakness, gives himself to us through Christ, by whom he makes us partakers of wisdom, righteousness, truth, and other blessings. (1Co 1:30.)
This is Jehovah. It is worthy of observation that, when he calls Christ the God of believers, he gives to him the name “Jehovah;” from which we infer that the actual eternity of God belongs to the person of Christ. Besides, since Christ has thus made himself known to us by the gospel, this proves the base ingratitude of those who, not satisfied with so full a manifestation, have dared to add to it their own idle speculation, as has been done by Popery.
We have waited for him. He expresses the firmness and perseverance of those who have once embraced God in Christ; for it ought not to be a temporary knowledge, but we must persevere in it steadfastly to the end. Now, Isaiah speaks in the name of the ancient Church, which at that time had its seat, strictly speaking, among the Jews alone; and therefore, despising as it were all the gods that were worshipped in other countries, he boldly declares that he alone, who revealed himself to Abraham, (Gen 15:1,) and proclaimed his law by the hand of Moses, (Exo 20:1,) is the true God. Other nations, which were involved in the darkness of ignorance, did not “wait for” the Lord: for this “waiting” springs from faith, which is accompanied by patience, and there is no faith without the word.
Thus he warns believers that their salvation rests on hope and expectation; for the promises of God were as it were suspended till the coming of Christ. Besides, we ought to observe what was the condition of those times; for it appeared as if either the promise of God had come to nought, or he had rejected the posterity of Abraham. Certainly, though they looked very far, God did not at that time appear to them; and therefore they must have been endued with astonishing patience to endure such heavy and sharp temptations. Accordingly, he bids them wait quietly for the coming of Christ; for then they will clearly perceive how near God is to them that worship him.
The same doctrine ought to soothe us in the present day, so that, though our salvation be concealed, still we may “wait for the Lord” with firm and unshaken hope, and, when he is at a distance, may always say, Lo, here he is. In times of the greatest confusion, let us learn to distinguish him by this mark, This is he. (148) As to the words, though he says, in the past tense, (149) “We rejoiced and were glad in his salvation;” yet the words denote a continued act; and, a little before, he had said in the future tense, “He will save us.” The meaning may be thus summed up, “Christ will never disappoint the hopes of his people, if they call on him with patience.”
(146) Bogus footnote
(147) Bogus footnote
(148) Bogus footnote
(149) Bogus footnote
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
ADVENT THOUGHTS AND JOYS
Isa. 25:9. And it shall be said in that day, &c.
Isaiah is here, as he is so often, the prophet not merely of future events, but of future states of mind and feeling; not merely of Gods dealings with His people, but of the way in which they would or should meet their God.
To what event does he refer!
1. First of all, to the deliverance of Hezekiah and his people from King Sennacherib [1054] That deliverance was recognised as Gods work. The recognition of Gods presence in the great turning-points of human history is in all ages natural to religious minds. He is with men and nations at all times, but in the great crises of history that presence is brought more vividly before the imagination. So was it when a great storm destroyed the Spanish Armada, and when the power of the first Napoleon was broken first at Leipsic and then at Waterloo. Devout minds felt that these were reappearances of God in human history, and they rejoiced in Him.
[1054] It was no ordinary day that saw the discomfiture of the Assyrian host before the walls of Jerusalem. We can scarcely understand the terror and dismay with which a religious Jew must have watched the growth of those mighty Oriental despotisms which, rising one after the other in the valley of the Euphrates and of the Tigris, aspired to nothing less than the conquest of the known world. The victory of a conqueror like Sennacherib meant the extinction of national life and of personal liberty in the conquered people; it meant often enough violent transportation from their homes, separation from their families, with all the degrading and penal accompaniments of complete subjugation. It meant this to the conquered pagan cities; for Jerusalem it meant this and more. The knowledge and worship of God maintained by institutions of God, by institutions of Divine appointment, maintained only in that little corner of the wide world, were linked on to the fortunes of the Jewish state, and in the victory of Sennacherib would be involved not merely political humiliation, but religious darkness. When, then, his armies advanced across the continent again and again, making of a city a heap, and of a fenced city a ruin, and at last appeared before Jerusalem, when the blast of the terrible men was as a storm against the wall, there was natural dismay in every religious and patriotic soul. It seemed as though a veil or covering, like that which was spread over the holy things in the Jewish ritual, was being spread more and more completely over all nations at each step of the Assyrian monarchs advance, and in those hours of darkness all true-hearted men in Jerusalem waited for God. He had delivered them from the Egyptian slavery; He had given them the realm of David and Solomon. He who had done so much for them would not desert them now. In His own way He would rebuke this insolent enemy of His truth and His people, and this passionate longing for His intervention quickened the eye and welled the heart of Jerusalem when at last it came. The destruction of Sennacheribs host was one of those supreme moments in the history of a people which can never be lived over again by posterity. The sense of deliverance was proportioned to the agony which had preceded it. To Isaiah and his contemporaries it seemed as though a canopy of thick darkness was lifted from the face of the world, as though the recollections of slaughter and of death were entirely swallowed up in the absorbing sense of deliverance, as though the tears of the city had been wiped away and the rebuke of Gods people was taken from earth, and therefore from the heart of Israel there burst forth a welcome proportioned to the anxious longing that had preceded it: Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him; He will save us.Liddon.
2. But beyond the immediate present, Isaiah sees, it may be indistinctly, into a distant future. The judgment of his time foreshadowed some universal judgment upon all the enemies of mankind, some deliverance final, universal, at the end of time. For that judgment and deliverance the Church, both on earth and in heaven, waits and prays (Psa. 74:10; Psa. 74:22-23; Rev. 6:9-10). To them the answer seems to be long delayed; but it will come (Rev. 6:12-17); and when at last it bursts upon the world, it will be welcomed by the servants of God as was the deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrian army.
3. But between the days of Hezekiah and the final judgment there is another event closer to the prophets thoughtthe appearance of the great Deliverer in the midst of human history. All that belongs to the nearer history of Judah melts away in the prophets vision into that greater future which belongs to the King Messiah. The Assyrians themselves are replaced in his thoughts by the greater enemies of humanity; the city of David and Mount Zion become the spiritual city of God, the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the Church of the Divine Redeemer. Here, as so often, the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, with its vast and incalculable consequences to the world of souls, is the keynote of Isaiahs deepest thought, and in our text he epitomises the heart-song of Christendom, which ascends day by day to the throne of the Redeemer.
(1.) Lo, this is our God. Christ is not for us Christians merely or chiefly the preacher or herald of a religion of which another being, distinct from Himself, is its object. The Gospel creed does not run thus, There is no God but God, and Christ is His prophet. When He appears to the soul of man at the crisis of its penitence, or its conversion, the greeting which meets and befits Him is not, Lo, this is a good man sent from God to teach some high and forgotten moral truths; no, but Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him; He will save us! (H. E. I., 835845).
(2.) So might the Jews, the children of the prophets, have sung; so did some of those who entered most deeply into the meaning of the promises given to their fathers (Luk. 1:46-55; Luk. 1:68-79; Luk. 2:29-32).
(3.) So might the noble philosophers of Greece have sung; so they did sing when, in Christ the incarnate God, of whom they had dreamed and for whom they had sought, was revealed to them.
(4.) So have sung in all ages that multitude of human souls whom a profound sense of moral need has brought to the feet of the Redeemer (H. E. I., 948971).H. P. Liddon, M.A.: Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii. pp. 13.
I. WHAT ARE THOSE COMINGS OF CHRIST WHICH ARE THE OCCASION OF JOY TO THE CHURCH?
1. His coming in the flesh, His incarnation. To this His people had looked forward; in it they rejoiced. Good cause had they for gladness, for He came to spread the gospel feast, to remove the clouds of ignorance and error, to destroy the reign of sin and death.
2. His coming in the Spirit, at the day of Pentecost; in the experience of the individual soul, in the hours of penitence, of temptation, of sorrow. His coming in the flesh was the great promise of the Old Testament; His coming in the Spirit is the great promise of the New.
3. His coming to receive the soul to glory. He comes unchanged. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.
4. His coming to bring the present dispensation to a close. It may be heralded by many alarming and distressing events, but it will be itself a cause for joy. To the wicked it will be a day of unmixed terror, but to the righteous of gladness; for it will bring them redemption from the power of every sin, from the assault of every enemy; every fetter will be broken, every cloud dispelled.
II. WHAT IS REQUISITE TO ENABLE US TO WELCOME THE APPROACH OF CHRIST?
1. A knowledge of Him as our God and Redeemer.
2. An experience of the benefits of His salvation.
3. Love for Him.
4. Submission to His will and zeal for His glory.Samuel Thodey.
I. In the day of judgment nothing will inspire us with joy and confidence but a real interest in Jesus Christ. The ungodly now possess many sources of present enjoyment; but in that day they will have ceased for ever. One grand, all-important idea will then fill the mind: The solemn day of account is come; how shall I abide it? How shall I endure the presence of the heart-searching Judge? But whence can this assurance be obtained? Only from an interest in Jesus Christ. Those who do not possess it will then be filled with shame and terror; but, amid all its terrors, those who do possess it will be enabled to rejoice.
II. In that day none will be found to have a real interest in Christ, nor capable of rejoicing, but those who are now waiting for His coming. This is a characteristic of all genuine Christians (1Th. 1:10; Tit. 2:13; 1Co. 1:7; Luk. 12:36). Hence, in our text, we find the saints representing their conduct towards the Lord in the days of their flesh by the same term: We have waited for Him. It may be useful, then, to point out some of the particulars implied in this general description of the Christian character. To wait for Christ implies
1. A FIRM BELIEF IN HIS SECOND COMING, and of the infinitely momentous consequences which will follow that event. The true Christian walks by faith, not by sight. Unlike the profane (2Pe. 3:4), he lays it down in his mind as an infallible truth that the day of the Lord will come.
2. A CONSTANT ENDEAVOUR TO BE PREPARED FOR IT. How the wise virgins acted (Mat. 25:4).
3. A PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING (Luk. 12:35-46). Are you thus waiting for the second coming of your Lord?Edward Cooper: Practical and Familiar Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 225240.
The chapter from which these words are taken contains a noble description of the glory and the grace of God, of His glory in ruling irresistibly the nations of the earth, and in crushing the enemies of His Church, of His glory and grace in the salvation of mankind. It records by anticipation the triumphs of the Gospel, the downfall of the powers of darkness, the annihilation of death itself, the reign of perpetual peace and joy.
I. A recognition of the birth of the Messiah. It is a matter of historical certainty that the people of God did wait for the coming of the Saviour from the time of the very first promise given to the woman after the fall, to the period of our Lords appearance upon the earth, at which season there was a general expectation in all the neighbouring regions of the advent of some mighty personage who was to realise all the sublime descriptions of the ancient prophets. Anna the prophetess, Joseph of Arimithea, the aged Simeon and other devout men, were waiting for the consolation of Israel.
II. An assertion of His divinity. This is our God,not merely a prophet, a priest, a king, chosen by Jehovah from among His people, and commissioned to give laws and statutes, as Moses was, or to assert Jehovahs authority and punish idolatry, as Elijah was, or to denounce His wrath against an apostate people and at the same time to foreshadow a great deliverance to come, as Isaiah was himself, or Jeremiah, or any other of those holy men who spake in old times by the Holy Ghost; but this is OUR GOD, this is EmmanuelGod with usGod manifest in the flesh.
III. A declaration of His atoning Work. How vast that work He took on Himself to execute,the reconciliation in His own person of sinful man to an offended God, the overthrow of the kingdom of Satan, and the abolition of death! No man could have performed it (Psa. 49:7). Could any of the angels, then, have taken in hand this enterprise? Beyond the power, above the conception of any being of limited goodness, knowledge, and power, it could only be accomplished by the Divine Son of God. It was Gods work, devised and executed by Omnipotence.
IV. A recognition of the second coming of Christ. We are admonished by the Church that there is a Second Coming of Christ, for which the Church is waiting, and for which we, with every member of the Church, ought to be looking with earnest and anxious expectation. Is our language, How long, O Lord? Our answer is, How long the final triumph of the Saviour may be deferred, how long a period may elapse before the world is ripe for judgment, is one of those secrets which God has reserved to Himself (Act. 1:7). The end of all things, if it be not, in the literal sense of the word, at hand, is every year and every day and every moment drawing nearer to each of us. We are all in silent but unceasing movement towards the judgment-hall of Christ. In this point of view, the moment of our death may be regarded as placing us at once before His awful tribunal, for the space between the two, as it affects our eternal destination, will be to us as nothing. When the judgment is set, the books opened, we shall suddenly stand before the Judge, precisely in that state of preparation in which we were found at the moment of our departure out of life. Those who have lived as children of God, as servants of Jesus Christ, under the solemn, yet not fearful, expectation of that day, will then be able to lift up their heads and raise the song of joyful recognition.
Application.If ever there was a great practical truth, this is one. If we do not wait for the great day of the Lord in such a spirit of carefulness and circumspection as to refer to it all our actions, words, and thoughts, then it is perfectly certain that we shall be surprised at its coming and be taken utterly unprepared. It will come on us as a thief in the night, and we shall sink into everlasting perdition; not for the want of means and opportunities of being saved, but for want of common prudence and forethought in the most momentous of all concerns. What, then, is the conclusion? Live like men that are waiting for their Lord, that when He arrives, He may be welcomed. Accustom yourselves to His presence, in His sanctuary, at His table, in His word, in secret communings with Him in the temple of a purified heart. So when this solemn day shall have come the glad response may be, Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him; He will come and save us!C. J. Blomfield, D.D.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(9) It shall be said in that day.The speakers are obviously the company of the redeemed, the citizens of the new Jerusalem. The litanies of supplication are changed into anthems of praise for the great salvation that has been wrought for them.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. Lo, this is our God All the ransomed from all the earth use this language.
We have waited for him Revelation has dawned slowly, but it comes in this prediction to its perfect and eternal clearness. The truth comes out that He alone can and will save, and everlasting rejoicing ensues thereat. This foreseen joy is that of the whole redeemed Church.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Certainty of Yahweh’s Salvation and the Humiliation of Moab ( Isa 25:9 to Isa 26:2 ).
In that day when death is defeated His people will be glad and rejoice in His salvation, and sing of Him Who is their strong city in which they can be safe, while Moab and all who are like them will be trodden down in the dung. For Moab is the picture of all that is low, it is Yahweh’s washpot (Psa 60:8).
Analysis.
a
b For in this mountain will the hand of Yahweh rest. And Moab will be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of the dungpit (Isa 25:10).
c And he will spread out his hands in its midst, as the swimmer spreads out his hands to swim
c And He will lay low his pride, together with the craft of his hands (Isa 25:11).
b And the fortress of the fort of your high walls has He brought down, laid low and brought to the ground, even to the dust (Isa 25:12).
a In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah, “We have a strong city, He will appoint salvation for its walls and bulwarks. Open the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps truth may enter in. You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in Yahweh for ever, for in Yah Yahweh, is an everlasting rock (literally ‘a rock of ages’)” (Isa 26:1-4)
In ‘a’ ‘in that day’, the day that death is swallowed up for ever, will His people rejoice in Yahweh’s salvation, and in the parallel ‘in that day’ they will glory in the strong City which is their salvation. In ‘b’ Moab is trodden down in all his dirt, and in the parallel his fortress is laid low even to the dust. In ‘c’ he will try to swim in his dirt, and in the parallel Yahweh will bring him low.
Isa 25:9
‘And each will say in that day,
“See, this is our God.
We have waited for him and he will save us.
This is Yahweh,
We have waited for him. We will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” ’
‘Each will say in that day’, that is in the day when death is in process of defeat. In that day each of God’s people will declare and proclaim their confidence in Him. They will declare that this is the work of their God, Yahweh, for Whom they have waited for so long. And they will declare their confidence and faith in the fact that they will share in His deliverance, and find gladness and rejoicing in it. Note the emphasis on God’s sovereignty in salvation. He has done it and they have waited on Him for it. Note the emphasis on ‘waiting’. It is a work of God and therefore has to be waited for, and not a work of man which can be accomplished by man. It is something that is received from Him as a gift.
Isa 25:10-12
‘For in this mountain will the hand of Yahweh rest. And Moab will be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of the dungpit. And he will spread out his hands in its midst, as the swimmer spreads out his hands to swim, and he will lay low his pride, together with the craft of his hands. And the fortress of the fort of your high walls has he brought down, laid low and brought to the ground, even to the dust.’
‘For in this mountain will the hand of Yahweh rest.’ There is a good case for tacking this on to the previous verse. Certainly it goes there in thought. It is confirming that in the mountain where God gave to His people the good things of Isa 25:6, and in the mountain where He defeated death so that it was swallowed up for ever (Isa 25:7-8), there the hand of Yahweh will rest. His work will have been done and His hand will no longer need to be active to save, just as at the end of His work of creation He rested on the seventh day with no further need to create (Exo 20:11). It is the end of all things as a new heaven and earth open up in which dwell righteousness. The resting of the hand of Yahweh may also be seen as a resting on His land and on His people in love and protection.
But in contrast is Moab. Whereas God’s hand is on His people, His feet are on Moab. They too will be put in their place. They who refused the opportunity of uniting with the people of God and with the Davidic house (chapters 15-16), will be trodden down where they have remained, in the dungpit (the pit where men relieve themselves, the outside toilet). The picture is deliberately unpleasant. ‘Like straw trodden down in the water of the dungpit.’ The straw would be put down to cover the contents of the dungpit, but it soon gets trodden down and then fails in its purpose, becoming soiled with the contents of the dungpit. So will it be with Moab. Indeed their state will be such that they will try to swim in that water, becoming themselves also soiled by it. This is the pathetic lot of those who reject Yahweh and His offer of salvation. They finish up swimming in the dungpit!
We can compare how in the Psalms Moab is seen as Yahweh’s washpot (Psa 60:8; Psa 108:9). Perhaps Moab were particularly noted for behaviour seen as disgusting by others. The idea is the same. They receive the dirt and waste which is dispensed by others. They are the equivalent of the refuse pit.
Note the sudden move from the general to the particular. Since Isa 24:1 all has been anonymous, but now Moab has been singled out. Isaiah wishes us to recognise that we are here dealing with real people, including Israel’s neighbours. But they have been selected because their behaviour in chapter 16 has illustrated what Isaiah is trying to say. It may also be because of their strength at this time and their resulting pride and belligerence against Judah.
‘And he will lay low his pride, together with the craft of his hands.’ Compare ‘we have heard of the pride of Moab’ (Isa 16:6) whereby they were too proud to accept God’s offer to unite with His people. Now that pride will be laid low in the dungpit, along with their hand-made gods, the craft of their hands.
How this will happen is then described more literally, ‘and the fortress of the high fort of your walls has He brought down, laid low and brought to the ground, even to the dust.’ Even their topmost towers, the strongpoint of their defences, will be brought down, made to collapse and finish up in the dust in the day when Yahweh acts. All will be levelled to the ground.
So Moab are here selected as an example because of their behaviour in chapter 16, and possibly because of their strong opposition to Judah, but in essence they represent all who have refused God’s offer of mercy. The whole rebellious world will be laid low, together with their hand-made gods.
Note the regular triplication, ‘brought down’, ‘laid low’ and ‘brought to the ground’ so typical of Isaiah.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Praise for the Subjection of Moab
v. 9. And it shall be said in that day, v. 10. For in this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest, v. 11. And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, v. 12. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Isa 25:9. And it shall be said This verse contains the proposition of the antistrophe, or antiphonal part of this doxology, wherein the people may be supposed to sing in reply to the former part, which as we have observed, was the song of the elders. It was to be sung on that day, or at that time, in which God had wrought his wonders for the salvation of his people. The expressions are strong and glowing, and are well suited to that state of mind which is the consequence of high favours and signal deliverances vouchsafed from God.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 893
CHRISTS ADVENT A GROUND OF JOY
Isa 25:9. It shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
IF the benefits of Christianity were duly estimated by us, there would be no bounds to our attachment to it, or our delight in it. What an assemblage of images have we in the verses immediately preceding my text, to display the excellence of our holy religion! In truth, the human mind is scarcely capable of combining such a variety of ideas as are here presented to us, so as to reduce them to one common focus, and at one view to comprehend them all. But the common result of all will doubtless be that which is declared in my text. The whole Church of God, and every individual member of it, will be impressed alike with wonder and admiration at a discovery of our redeeming God, and will exclaim, This is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him; we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation!
Let us, then, consider this,
I.
As the language of the Church at large
The time spoken of in Scripture as that day sometimes refers to one period, and sometimes to another; and frequently comprehends several distinct periods, in which the things predicted shall receive a partial and progressive accomplishment. In the passage before us, the prophet may be considered as comprehending in his view,
1.
The apostolic age
[For many hundred years had the Jews been waiting for the Messiahs advent: and at that precise time, when Jesus came, were they expecting him, as the consolation of Israel, and looking for redemption in Jerusalem. And no sooner was he born into the world, than an angel appeared to certain shepherds, to announce his advent; saying, Behold, we bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: for unto you is born, this day, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord [Note: Luk 2:10-11.]. As for the joy which these tidings excited, we may judge of it, not only from the exultation of the shepherds, but from the expressions of that aged saint, who, on taking the infant Saviour in his arms, exclaimed, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation [Note: Luk 2:25-30.]!]
2.
The millennial period
[The Church is now expecting a second advent of our Lord, when he shall take to him his great power, and reign over the face of the whole earth. We verily believe that the time is near at hand, when all kings shall bow down before him, and all nations shall serve him, and all the kingdoms of the world become his undivided empire. And oh! what joy will his advent diffuse throughout the whole intelligent creation, both of Jews and Gentiles! Of that time the Prophet Isaiah speaks, when he says, Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: for thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like a herb [Note: Isa 66:10-14.]. And in the book of Revelation, the same event is thus announced: I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings; saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready [Note: Rev 19:6-7.].
But there will be yet a further accomplishment of our text at,]
3.
The day of judgment
[All that are in the graves are waiting for the Saviours advent: and when we consign any saint to the silent tomb, we do it in an assured expectation that, at the appointed hour, he shall rise again to meet the Lord in the air. The very spirits that are before the throne of God are also waiting for that blessed day, when, by their re-union with the body, their bliss shall be complete, and their felicity entire. To that period we may conceive the Apostle refers, when he says, The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body [Note: Rom 8:22-23.]. At all events, we are sure that it is that period which the grace of God teaches us to be looking for, even for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ [Note: Tit 2:13.]. How will every saint, even from Adam to that very hour, then say, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him; this is the Lord; we have waited for him: we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation! Then, indeed, will death be swallowed up in victory, and all tears be wiped from off all faces [Note: ver. 7. 8.], and the Saviours advent be celebrated in this universal song.]
But we need not wait for any distant seasons; for even now may our text be taken,
II.
As the language of every individual believer
Yes, now, at this present moment, does the believer thus express himself,
1.
In the recollection of what is past
[Long has he waited upon God, that he might obtain mercy to his soul. To win Christ, and be found in him, has been the supreme object of his desire. For this he has wept, and prayed, and laboured, if by any means he might obtain it. And now, at last, Christ has revealed himself to him, as an able and all-sufficient Saviour. Now, then, with grateful surprise, he exclaims, Lo, this is my God, for whom I have waited and prayed! this is my Lord, whom alone, and above all things, I have desired to behold. I once thought the time long; but now I regret not the troubles which I endured whilst seeking after him: had they been ten times as pungent, or had I endured them ten times as long, I should not now repine: one view of him as reconciled to me, and one hour spent in communion with him, is sufficient to repay me for a whole life of sorrow and suspense. I will appeal to all, whether any man, who can say, He hath taken me out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay, does not find occasion also to add, He hath put a new song into my mouth, even thanksgiving to our God [Note: Psa 40:1-3.]?]
2.
In the anticipation of what is yet future
[Doubtless he looks forward to many conflicts with sin and Satan: he sees a host of enemies arrayed against him, enemies with whom he would be utterly unable to cope: but he knows in whom he has believed; and, in dependence on the Saviour, he defies every adversary, saying, In the Lord put I my trust: I will not fear what either men or devils can do against me [Note: Psa 27:1.]. In answer to the remonstrances of a guilty conscience, he replies, My Lord will save me: and, if the number or power of his enemies be urged against him, he answers with confidence, This Saviour is my God: and if He be for me, who can be against me? This is He for whom I have waited; and He will save me. In his name I set up my banners; and in reliance upon Him, I know that no enemy shall prevail against me, or ever pluck me out of his hands. I give loose therefore to joy: yea, I will be glad, and rejoice in his salvation [Note: Psa 20:5.]; and though I see my Saviour no otherwise than by faith, I will rejoice in him with joy unspeakable and full of glory.]
Application
What now shall I say, to commend this Saviour to you?
1.
Let your expectations from him be enlarged
[It is not possible for you to expect too much. If your sins were numerous as the sands upon the sea-shore, you might expect that he would blot them all out as a morning cloud, or cast them behind him into the depths of the sea. If he who has undertaken to save you be God, what have you to fear? And if he have promised to be a God unto you, it is not possible that you should ever want. You may stretch your requests to the utmost bounds of human language to express, or of human ingenuity to conceive, and they shall fall infinitely short of what you shall surely realize, if he himself be yours. All things are yours, if ye be Christs [Note: Adopt the language of David, Psa 62:5-8.].]
2.
Let your joy in him abound
[Doubtless, whilst you are in the body, you will have more or less cause for sorrow. But methinks, if you were out of the body, you could scarcely have more ground for joy. Only reflect on him who has undertaken to save you, or on the salvation which he has engaged to bestow upon you; and your whole life will be one continued scene of joyful exultation and of holy triumph. It will be, in short, a very heaven upon earth.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
There is a very great beauty in this verse, as well as great glory; and the believer enters into the proper apprehension of it, when what is here said by the Church at large, he knows, and can, and doth make application of to himself. There is now no question as to whom redemption is wholly owing, in that precious soul’s experience, from knowing and feeling, under the convincings of the Holy Ghost, the plague of his own heart, hath fled to Jesus, and found him a full all-sufficient, and complete Saviour. And what holy triumphs will be his portion in that day, that blessed glorious day, when, closing the eye of the body in death, the eye of the soul opens to the view of Jesus, and in him, to all the glories of eternity! Oh! the blessedness of the long waiting, yea, the long exercised soul, when this day breaks in upon him! I detain the Reader with a short observation more upon this verse, just to remark that the word save, he will save us, is derived from the same root as the word Jesus, a Saviour, is derived: as if to direct the Church to his identical person: this is our God – this is our Lord! It is blessed to observe this!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
God, a Continual Discovery
Isa 25:9
The text reads like an exclamation, like a great utterance of glad surprise. We may discover in it the voice of people who have been long expecting deliverance, and have at length realised it. The text is, therefore, an exclamation. The exclamation is an argument. The argument is that God is a daily or continual discovery to the religious consciousness. He is always more than he was yesterday; the heart is continually exclaiming, This is what we have been waiting for; behold, this is the glory of God; every other thing we have seen is simple and common compared with what we now look upon. It is thus the visions of history come and go; but always there stands right up in heaven’s centre the astounding light, old as eternity, yet new as a surprise. We are not dissatisfied with the past, we do not compare the present and the past invidiously, or to the disadvantage of the past; we look upon all things that are gone as but introductory, symbolic, and that vision or truth which we hold here and now is the God we have been waiting for. Let us, so to say, have the God of to-day. He is not new; he is gathered history, he is focused revelation; all that the prophets have spoken and the psalmists have sung concerning him we realise in his personality: and yet he is the God of to-day in a great, glad, solemn sense, the greatest that has revealed itself to the religious consciousness. That is orthodoxy to be orthodox up to date, to seize the immediate vision, the present truth; not as something new, detached, isolated; but as the last flash of the ever-burning glory released to drive away some further reach of our great gloom. It is possible to hold on to the past, and yet to hold on to the present; and that is only truly modern which is ancient, and that is only truly worth keeping in antiquity which adapts itself to the immediate need of life’s little day. We know what it is to be going through delightful and enchanting scenery. Hear the travellers: How beautiful is this land; how goodly a land to live in; how well the little cottage home would nestle on that slope or near yonder wood! Let a few miles be passed, and they say, No, this is the place bolder, finer altogether in every landscape feature, more fresh air here: this is the place! A few miles farther on, and why is the party dumb? Some are blind with tears, all are silent: what is this? They have just beheld the Jungfrau, its majestic figure, its unspeakable purity, and their tears say, This this! Do they despise the simpler country through which they have come? Not at all: but for that simpler country they never could have come to this great vision; they walked to it through the common turnpike, then up the rocky steeps, then along the greensward, and little by little they came into the presence of this revelation; then they said, This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. The man who can chatter in the presence of the Jungfrau can have no heaven.
This is the very glory and the chief delight of religious study. It is so that we apply the thought in the Bible. It is always on the next page that the former vision is eclipsed. We are delighted with all the pages; the first page gives us a creation, and we are pleased with the wonderful house in which we have to live; but by-and-by the house becomes more luminous and beautiful and hospitable; presently it is filled with love, and family life, and joy, and music; and we are continually saying as we read the Bible, This is the page. Yet it is not the page for to-morrow; the page for to-morrow is farther on, for all ages farther on. Never does there come a disappointment, but continually there burns or shines a hope which makes all realised joy seem small. If we had not the great hope we should be content with what we already hold in the hand; it is the hope which seems to turn all possession into more or less of mockery and disappointment. It is also the same with providence. Providence enlarges itself every day into some new vision or apocalypse. It does not seem as if we could have a better day than the present; yet when to-morrow comes we forget it as to its superior claim, and only remember it as a transient vision or stimulus by the way, thankful for it, yet it is to-day that brings into itself all things radiant and all things musical. God’s providence never ceases. God has not written one providential chapter once for all, and then left the world to study it: God rewrites his Bible in the events of every day. The record of the present time is not the record of man, though man may think so. God often guides the hand that drives the recording pen. When we look back upon great breadths of journalism, we come to see that through the whole there has passed one organic thought, or nerve, or purpose, and that there has been shaping where we thought there was nothing but inchoateness and chaos. So when all the journal is written up to the last, when the weary pen writes Finis , the journal will have quite a Bible look. This is the wonder of God: he cannot be found out unto perfection; he cannot be measured and set up in standard figure; he is more like the horizon; evidently there, yet where? place without locality. Approach the horizon; it enlarges and recedes. A child thinks he can clutch the golden band that circles the mountains at eventide, and yet behold he is farther away than ever his dreams wandered; it is here, there, yonder, beyond: an eternal lure, an eternal illusion as to the mere handling and literal realisation.
What is the proper attitude or disposition of religious students? “We have waited for him.” That is the right attitude. Waiting does not imply lethargy. He does not wait who lingers in a do-nothing and slothful condition. That is not waiting, that is idleness; that is not tarrying, that is practical blasphemy. Waiting implies energy, hope, restrained passion. The man who really waits really burns. Waiting is not incompatible with service; on the contrary, it implies service, it implies desire, expectation. The man who has a great expectancy does not look down; his face is not a blank, it is a burning, glowing symbol; the expectation is in him, it makes him glow. He cannot be impetuous, petulant, querulous, vehement, or demonstrative; but in proportion to the hope or promise that is in him is his zeal. If we were to measure our waiting by our lethargy, surely some of us wait well! We are princes in slothfulness; we take every prize ever offered for lethargy. Do not call that waiting or standing still. It is an inversion of every thought and purpose of God.
What is the great end of religious discipline? The text in forms us: “He will save us.” These are words so short that a child might remember them. They are but four in number, yet they hold within their little limit everything that can be thought about sin, history, recovery, destiny. “He will save us.” He will not disappoint our waiting, he will not satirise our manhood; he is not a God who has given us the aspiration of angels and then condemned us to the fate of dogs: it is not by such paradox that the loving God administers his universe. Judge of your destiny by your present personality as seen or witnessed in your aspiration, your passion, your desire, your capacity for service; judge of the possible future by your greatest hours of consciousness or realised power and personality. Somehow you have been so constituted as to pray; then you cannot have been so made as to be destroyed like dogs. Whether you can commit suicide is another question; we can close our eyes against the noontide, and declare from our point of view it is midnight; in making such a declaration we are keeping strictly to the line of personal fact at a given moment; yet we are not speaking the universal truth. Men should be careful how they degrade partial personal experiences into universal propositions. We must not misjudge God. If we have been capable of waiting for him, by that very capacity of patience we prove that God has been meaning all the time to come to us and to save us. Singing means more than mere utterance. God never meant the soul that can sing to him to vanish like an extinguished spark. Take thy singing as a pledge of thy possible immortality in blessed heaven; take all the little beginnings and germs of personality and power as pledges that God means harvest golden infinite harvest. Why not reason yourselves upwards? Why this continual groping after the grave as if it were the only home you were destined to occupy? You might reason the other way, and be really glad of heart, and have great riches of grace and treasures of hop and confidence. How long will ye refuse to accept the whole benediction of God?
Here, then, we have our three words, and we should keep them as three precious jewels, that God is a daily discovery to the religious consciousness, that is to say, he is always more and more, clearer and clearer, nearer and nearer, tenderer and tenderer. Here is the attitude which the soul should maintain towards him an attitude of waiting for him in the confidence that he will come; and here is the end for which all our religious consciousness should be cultivated to be saved not in some narrow, selfish, impoverished sense, but in the greatest sense: saved from despair, saved from moral degradation, saved from perdition, whatever that grim and awful word may mean; and not only saved from certain destinies, but saved into blessed inheritances and realisations, saved into manhood, into pureness, into virtue, into service, into liberty, into heaven. He does not preach the gospel who limits the word “salvation” to one act. Is there a greater word in human speech than this word salvation? He does mischief and not good who so speaks about salvation as to limit it to an aspect of selfish regard; on the other hand, he is the apostle of heaven who sees in salvation a new sphere of service, a new motive to action, a new pledge of immortality. We always use the word salvation with the word Christ. They were never meant to be dissociated. Christ did visibly come into the world of a certainty, but he was in the world spiritually from the foundation thereof. And he was only in the world thus incidentally because he was in the world before the world was created. Nor was he in existence simply as a Personality, a metaphysical Deity; he was in the creation as the Lamb slain, before a single line of stones had been laid as the foundation of the earth. We have often had occasion to say, and to rejoice in the saying, The atonement was rendered before the guilt was contracted. Here is a thought, then, of continually heightening sublimity. We do not exhaust God, we continually approach him; we cannot surpass him, he always leads our education, and heads our spiritual progress. We have read thus of the living God; we have said, This is God in judgment, he drowned the wide world, this is God; he burned Sodom and Gomorrah, this is God. Men are so prone to see God in terrible things in pestilence, in famine, in sore distress, of family and nation. We then turn over into historic matter, and we say, This is God, ordering, shaping, leading all the movements of man, leading the blind by a way that they know not; lo, this is God! Then we go farther on, and come to the singing brethren, the Davids and the Asaphs of the ages, and as they touch their harps, and lift their trumpets to their lips, or breathe out psalm and song, we say in the church of music, This is God, and we have waited for him; this is the meaning of all government, of all history, music, song, rapture, gladness; this is our God, and we have waited for him. We pass on, and we come to the evangelists, we read their little condensation of history; we come to a place called Calvary; we see the uplifted Priest, we see the Agony, the Blood, the Dying, and we say, Lo, this is God; we have waited for him, and he will save us!
Note
“Isaiah was not the first who attained to a knowledge of the personality of Messiah. Isaiah’s vocation was to render the knowledge of this personality clearer and more definite, and to render it more efficacious upon the souls of the elect, by giving it a greater individuality. The person of the Redeemer is mentioned even in Gen 49:10 : ‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, until Shiloh ( the tranquilliser) come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be’ (i.e. him shall the nations obey). The personality of Messiah occurs also in several psalms which were written before the times of Isaiah; for instance, in the second and one hundred and tenth, by David; in the forty-fifth, by the sons of Korah; in the seventy-second, by Solomon. Isaiah has especially developed the perception of the prophetic and priestly office of the Redeemer, while in the earlier annunciations of the Messiah the royal office is more prominent; although in Psalm cx. the priestly office also is pointed out. Of the two states of Christ, Isaiah has expressly described that of the exinanition of the suffering Christ, while, before him, his state of glory was made more prominent. In the Psalms the inseparable connection between justice and suffering, from which the doctrine of a suffering Messiah necessarily results, is not expressly applied to the Messiah. We must not say that Isaiah first perceived that the Messiah was to suffer, but we must grant that this knowledge was in him more vivid than in any earlier writer; and that this knowledge was first shown by Isaiah to be an integral portion of Old Testament doctrine.” Kitto’s Cyclopdia of Biblical Literature.
Prayer
Almighty God, we come to the throne of grace, not of judgment, and there we may plead the blood that was shed for sin, and by the mighty mystery of the Cross, and all its gracious truth and meaning, we may enter into the mystery of pardon and into the joy of peace with God; therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We know the reality of the faith by the depth of the peace. This is the gift of God; this is the portion of those who have in them the Spirit of eternal life; this is their sign and their proof and their testimony. So, looking upon the calm of the soul, they live without fear, and they contemplate death in the spirit of victory. We bless thee for thy Word beginning far away, taking our thoughts back to beginnings and suggestions, and from the Genesis of thy revelation conducting our thought onward and upward to the glorious Apocalypse. May we walk steadily all the way, marvelling at thy wonderful power, and adoring thy wisdom and thy grace; recognising thy sovereignty, and watching the continual and gracious unfoldment of thy high purpose. Thus shall the word of Christ dwell in us richly; we shall receive nutrition from heaven, and in the strength derived from the Bread of Life we shall go on from day to day, until being disembodied, and having no longer this weary tabernacle of the flesh, we shall enter into the joy of perfect spiritual worship, seeing God by the pureness of our heart, and worshipping him with all the faculties he has redeemed and sanctified. Comfort those who are dejected; give a word of counsel and inspiration to any whose thoughts are bewildered. Lead the blind by a way that they know not. Take out of to-morrow the cloud, or the sting, or the fear which makes men dread the dawn; and by giving us peace with God we shall also have given unto us peace with men, and we shall begin to pray where we expected to die. The Lord work this miracle for us in the name and grace of God the Son; then in the wilderness we shall have a garden, and in the place of the hot sand a fountain of living water. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Isa 25:9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this [is] our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this [is] the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
Ver. 9. Lo, this is our God, ] sc., Jesus Christ, our sole Saviour, who is God blessed for ever, and our God by a specialty. Wait for him, for he waiteth to be gracious. Isa 30:18
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
we have waited. Reference to Pentateuch (Gen 49:18.)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Isa 25:9-12
Isa 25:9-12
“And it shall come to pass in that day, Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain will the hand of Jehovah rest; and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of a dunghill. And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst thereof, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim; but Jehovah will lay low his pride together with the craft of his hands. And the high fortress of thy walls hath he brought down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust.”
As Payne noted, this passage is offensive to modern ears, as the very idea of a condemned man having been thrown into a pit dunghill filled with water and fighting to swim out of it is by no means something pleasant to think about; but, on the other hand, God reveals to us in passages of this type just how utterly undesirable the status of wicked people is sure to be when God’s judgment comes upon them. Moab, in this passage, seems to have been singled out, not as a single nation awaiting God’s punishment, but as “A representative of all the obdurately hostile and unbelieving world whose God-resisting peoples shall be mowed down in the final destruction.
All of the figures that God uses in the Bible to describe the final punishment of the wicked are all repulsive: (1) the lake of fire; (2) the perpetual silence; (3) the outer darkness;, (4) where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; (5) where the fire is not quenched and the worm dieth not; (6) a pool of blood up to the horses bridles for 200 miles! etc. This description is the seventh;, (7) a man trying to swim out of a watered dung hole! Rather than being offended by such descriptions, men should strive to avoid the place or condition described.
“Where is death’s sting? where grave thy victory?
Where all the pain?
Now that thy King the veil that hung o’er thee
Hath rent in twain?
These precious lines from a hymn are an appropriate way to close our study of this tremendous chapter.
Isa 25:9 FELLOWSHIPING: In the day when Jehovah makes His feast for all peoples, in the day when He removes the curtain from between Himself and all nations and in the day when He swallows up death forever, those who have waited in eager faith will enter into a participation of the salvation He has provided. This passage reminds us of the prophecy of John the Baptists father of the coming Messiah (Luk 1:67-79) and of Simeons prophetic prayer (Luk 2:29-35). Much of the sin-stricken world was searching for fellowship with The Divine Being. They had even built altars to the Unknown God (Act 17:23). When the Unknown God became Known, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among men and accomplished His redemptive work and was proclaimed throughout the known world by the apostles, thousands and thousands of men of every tribe and tongue said, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him. . . . Men are still waiting for Him in places far away and near. He has made Himself knowable and available. But He has sovereignly chosen (Rom 9:10-11) to become knowable and available through a response of faith to the preached Word (cf. Rom 10:14-17). If every man is to have the opportunity to be glad and rejoice in his salvation, then those who know the Word must preach it to every man.
Isa 25:10 STAGGERED: This mountain has as its antecedent Zion. The tender hand of God will rest in mercy upon Zion, wiping away every tear. But, and the contrast is the point, the hand of Gods judgment will rest upon Mount Moab. Those in covenant relationship with Jehovah will be protected, sustained and feted. Those not in covenant with Him will be defeated. Moab had a long history of opposition to Jehovahs sovereignty (cf. our comments on Isaiah chapters 15 & 16, Vol. I). Moab probably represents all the enemies of Jehovahs covenant people. God will use secondary agents to bring about Moabs downfall-Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans will successively conquer and ravage the mountains and valleys east of the Jordan river. It will become a desolate, deprived and despised area-a haunt of jackals and other wild animals. It will be crushed and cast off like barnyard straw pitched into the dung pit. There it will be trodden under foot.
Isa 25:11 STRUGGLING: Moab, in the midst of its own desolation and despicability, will make frantic effort to save itself. Like a swimmer in danger of drowning, Moab will call upon every device and crafty plot it knows to save itself. But none of it will avail, for Jehovah is omnipotent. This is the point-the contrast between the high and exalted joy of Zion in its festive victory and the utter degradation and defeat of Moab.
Isa 25:12 STRUCK DOWN: Moab was as proud as Edom of her fortifications. There, east of the Jordan, in the high cliffs and mountains of that region they built their walled cities. Military strategy has always been and always will be in troop-warfare, to occupy the high ground. Ancient cities and villages invariably sought hills and rises in the terrain upon which to build. But Moabs arrogance and threatening need not be feared by Gods elect for He will bring their enemies down to the dust of the earth. And so it has been through the ages. The faithful Covenant-God has protected and sustained and fed His kingdom upon the earth and it is alive and flourishing today. In contrast, those enemies who have threatened and warred against Gods kingdom have come and gone and dissolved into dust, one after another. So shall it ever be.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
it shall: Isa 12:1, Zep 3:14-20, Rev 1:7, Rev 19:1-7
Lo: Isa 8:17, Isa 26:8, Isa 26:9, Isa 30:18, Isa 30:19, Gen 49:18, Psa 27:14, Psa 37:5-7, Psa 62:1, Psa 62:2, Psa 62:5-7, Mic 7:7, Luk 2:25, Luk 2:28-30, Rom 8:23-25, Tit 2:13, 2Pe 3:12, Rev 22:20
we will: Isa 12:2-6, Isa 66:10-14, Psa 9:14, Psa 20:5, Psa 21:1, Psa 95:1, Psa 100:1, Zec 9:9, Rom 5:2, Rom 5:3, Phi 3:1, Phi 3:3, 1Pe 1:6, 1Pe 1:8
Reciprocal: Gen 8:12 – And he Psa 25:3 – wait Psa 33:21 – For Psa 80:2 – come and save us Psa 96:13 – he cometh Psa 118:28 – my God Isa 2:11 – in that day Isa 9:3 – they joy Isa 26:1 – that day Isa 33:2 – be gracious Isa 33:22 – he will Isa 35:4 – behold Isa 40:9 – Behold Isa 40:31 – they that Isa 49:23 – for they Isa 64:4 – waiteth Lam 3:25 – good Zep 3:19 – I will undo Mat 25:6 – go Luk 21:28 – look Joh 16:20 – your Joh 16:22 – But Joh 20:20 – Then Joh 20:28 – My Lord Rom 8:25 – with patience Col 3:4 – ye 1Th 1:10 – wait 1Th 4:16 – the Lord 2Th 1:11 – our God Heb 9:28 – unto 1Pe 4:13 – ye may 1Jo 2:28 – have
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Isa 25:9. And it shall be said in that day By Gods people, in the way of triumph and reply to their enemies; Lo, this is our God Your gods are senseless and impotent idols; but our God is omnipotent, and hath done these great and glorious works which fill the world with admiration. We may well boast of him, for there is no god like him. We have waited for him To appear in flesh; have waited for the coming of our Messiah, or Saviour, long since promised, and have waited a long time; and now at last he is come into the world, bringing salvation with him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 25:9-12. A Song of Deliverance. Moab is Crushed.Then they will sing, Yahweh is our Saviour, let us exult in His salvation. For Moab shall be ignominiously trampled under foot, and if he tries to keep himself afloat, Yahweh will bring to nought all his clever and ingenious movements.
Isa 25:10. Moab: may be singled out as an example of Israels enemies in general, but more probably is intended literally, though to what historical situation the catastrophe belongs is quite uncertain. Cf. Isaiah 15 f., Jeremiah 48, Eze 25:8-11, Zep 2:8-10.
Isa 25:11 a. The LXX has no reference to swimming; the spreading forth of the hands may originally have referred to Moabs vain prayers.
Isa 25:12 is perhaps a variant of Isa 26:5.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
The great joy to come 25:9-12
The last part of this chapter returns to the emphasis of the first part: the joy that will come to God’s people at this time.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The redeemed will rejoice that they are finally in the presence of the God, whose rule and care they had longed to be delivered to for so long (cf. Rev 6:9-11; Rev 7:9-12). Finally, hope will have given way to sight, and Old Testament saints will rejoice because they are finally with their Savior (cf. Rom 11:25-26; 1Co 13:9-10; 1Co 13:12).